Walking With a Ghost EP

V2;
2005

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The White Stripes have always shown a tasteful appreciation for the traditional construction of the single, giving their fans a healthy selection of non-album B-sides and import-only bonus tracks to hunt down. So it seems an uncharacteristic misjudgment for them to headline this brief collection with their cover of Tegan and Sara's "Walking With a Ghost", a track that seems exactly the sort of likable but inconsequential bauble tailor-made for a B-side. Produced with an impulsive haste that is fast becoming one of the duo's hallmarks, this genial cover sounds singularly unpersuasive, a performance unlikely to challenge anyone's previously held opinions about the Stripes, Tegan and Sara, walking, or ghosts.

Although one can only speculate what exactly prompted Jack and Meg to cover "Walking With a Ghost", they do handle the song with a tangible affection-- despite what some Tegan and Sara connoisseurs might believe. In fact, the Stripes' version is almost reverential to fault, making it difficult to imagine a fan of the original disliking this too intensely, unless they simply object to Jack White's complexion or personal habits just on general principle. Likewise, those who find Tegan & Sara's skeletal brand of winsome Canadian pop to be unbearably trite and/or mundane will presumably remain unswayed by the White Stripes' modest Detroit upgrade.

Tegan and Sara's original has a slight build even by the White Stripes' rudimentary standards, and Jack's conversion of the guitars from acoustic to electric does little to heft it up. His reedy, double-tracked vocals match Tegan and Sara's phrasing almost exactly, injecting as much spirit as possible into their blank, repetitive non-sequiters like "I was walking with a ghost/ I said please, please don't insist." And Meg, needless to say, sounds well within her comfort zone, managing the song's elementary rhythm with aplomb. The twosome add a brief squiggle of guitar distortion and back-masking between choruses, but for better or worse decline the opportunity to expand this noisy interjection into a full-scale deconstruction.

The quality of the extras and B-sides accompanying the Get Behind Me Satan singles has run the gamut. Their stormy, Hendrixian cover of the Greenhorns' "Shelter of My Arms", a recent B-side to "The Denial Twist", deserves to be considered alongside the duo's best work, while the "Blue Orchid" flipside "Who's a Big Baby?" might arguably be the most worthless track released this year. For Walking With a Ghost, however, they've killed the suspense by padding the maxi-single out with four live versions of previously available album tracks.

Since the duo rarely add much in the way of polish to their studio productions, they are uniquely well-suited to the live recording format, and none of these live tracks differ drastically from their studio counterparts. The set's best track is an acoustic version of "Same Boy You've Always Known" recorded in Brazil that actually features a more refined vocal performance than appears on White Blood Cells, provided you're able to ignore the audience's slightly arrhythmic clap-along.

Live renditions of "As Ugly As I Seem" and "The Denial Twist", both recorded for KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic", remain faithful to the Get Behind Me Satan originals and will likely only appeal to the truly devoted, which could also be said for their barn-burning run-through of their debut album's "Screwdriver". As Walking With a Ghost lacks a genuine slam-dunk A-side, most listeners might be best served to just hold off entirely for now, saving attention for the inevitable lavish collection of White Stripes B-sides and rarities that's surely bound to appear sometime within the next couple holiday seasons.